Happy New Year Or 2019 - The Plan

So the end of a another year. Time for the usual renewal and looking forward to the future kind of post. Right now it does feel like a time of renewal. The New Year appears to be a time when my life is about to change. Significantly so. In previous years this has been a fundamentally upbeat post. It is odd that it was this day last year that everything started to change. Today things seem very precarious still. My predictions for the year to come seem to be more vague ideas than they have been in years gone by. This year has seen me me lose my auntie, my home, my relationship, my beloved car and about seventy five percent of my income. I have recently quit my job and now have to find one. Where I am living may be untenable soon. Many of these problems may sort themselves out and I have a feeling they will. Sadly it looks like nothing is going to sort out Fallout 76.

This year has been a bit of a let down on the gaming front at least so I am at a bit of a loss of what to write this year. After splitting up at the beginning of the year I haven’t had a proper paint station. So, whilst I have done a little bit of painting, I haven't finished a figure since March. I guess this is the real reason why I haven’t done much blogging this year.

I have been blogging for almost seven years now. This year has seen a bit of a bump. When I look at the blog numbers, the post count seems to support this. The post count plummets in April and there have even been three months with no posts at all. That said it has not been my worst year for posting. Somehow I have managed to put on about sixty five thousand hits. Not all of these have been from dodgy sites in Russia either so not bad when all considered.

It has also been a year where money has been tight. I have purchase very few figures. Again less than any other year. The grand total would be less than fifty. I have had about as many again brought for me. I am very grateful for that especially as I have had little free money.

There have been a couple of things I am proud off this year. Firstly, and mostly related to painting was the fact that I took the time to clear my bench of part painted stuff. This took a good chunk of time at the beginning of the year. Like many of you I have a significant lead mountain (and plastic and resin) but the part painted mountain was driving me up the wall. It felt good to get all the part painted stuff done. Then of course I realised that I have even more part painted stuff but that is by the by.

Perhaps the best for me was that I finished the rules for the Viking game. Now formally Northmen: A Time Of Sagas. I have been tinkering with them but they are playable. I have also done a lot of world building. Now I am happy to play the game and plan to start the ball rolling in February.

Figure painting wise this has been the worst year in a decade. My much maligned paint station is now sorely missed. Currently the shortage of space makes the prospect of getting another workstation unlikely in the short term.

Of those new figures Blood Bowl has featured highly. This has amounted to about a third of what has arrived across the year. I now have what I need to do Doom Lords, Skaven, and Dwarves with a few other bits and pieces. Last year the Skaven Team was the next one to be done. In terms of painting I have not painted a single figure for this game this year although I did finish the Orc team troll that had been sat around, 95% finished since the year before. All in all a bit of a wash out and I have not even started on what I had planned which was two full teams so in the region of thirty to thirty five figures.

At the beginning of the year Titansgrave, or rather the figures for it was catching my attention. Many of the figures could be used in other games. Some Sci-fi dwarves were finished. Obviously there were not enough of these. 

😏 

I have no specialists and no female characters and so may get some of these this year. One of my friends plays a lot of Shadowrun so I figured they they would also work out for that. I up-painted some Future Savages for this game. I really like these figures, which were designed by Mark Copplestone. These will do double duty for post-apocalypse. Also doing double duty for Titansgrave and post-apocalypse were the chaos cultists. I was quite pleased with how these turned out in the end. As part of the plan I would have liked to do some conversions of the plastic gnolls originally purchased for Frostgrave I planned, and would have liked to have brought some more figures for his game. That said I think I pretty much achieved my target for the year on this one. Like most other games, this will be a few years in the making I think.

The Viking game I run was expected to take up a big chunk of my painting time this year. It didn’t. I have plenty of stuff primed for the game from the year before last. If I totalled up all the fantasy figures I have done this year I might have painted about twenty, many of which are not really Viking in nature. I was expecting to paint fifty and maybe ninety. So again a definite undershoot. Frostgrave was also part of this years plan. Some of the figures might be useful for this but not many. I have more or less given up on this as a project but I suspect that most of them might get used for other things.

Zombies is another failure. I was going to take part in the annual Zomtober event. I even had figures purchased last year that I had planned to use. I did get six Mantic figures for Christmas which was nice. I had hoped to get about thirty figures done. I think I managed four as part of finishing off what I had on the bench. There is still a pile of older plastic stuff as well but I was expecting to get a fair chunk of the Mantic stuff I got last year done. I was hoping to paint at least a trays worth of figures so again a bit of a bust.

Kingdom Death Monster is something that I would really like. It is a game that I would throw a lot of effort at. Sadly I haven’t had the money and whilst I could be looking at it it as a present that is just too much money to spend. This project looks like it has died on the vine.

As far as background projects go nothing has really advanced. 6mm Napoleonics hasn’t gone anywhere. Weird War II/VBCW has seen some figures being primed but nothing more. In my head the 15mm mecha game has become a 28mm mecha game. I have done some work on the idea and have updated the rules but nothing more. Earlier on in the year I did some work on my ideas for a Savage World game set in the Underground of a post-apocalypse London. Some of the figures I painted at the beginning of the year will count as progress on this front. I quote “The English Civil Figures I have seem destined to stay in their box and the super hero figures are probably going to stay unpainted.” about sums it up.

X-Com is a game I talk about almost every year (going back for twenty years) and this year I haven’t really done much of that I haven’t painted or brought any figures although it has been on my mind. The new computer game left me a little uninspired. Having talked about it with a few people there seems to be some interest in the game so maybe things will progress. I would be happy to get a game on the table. At the moment it’s on the back burner but maybe I could get some stuff done later in the year.

In total I have painted just under one hundred and twenty figures this year. This is about half of what I had hoped. This only really happened because I had a good start to the year. Even with this limited amount of figures done the lead mountain has officially gone down this year. The New Cruelty is very unhappy.

This is the point where I start making predictions for 2019. This seems like a fools game at the moment. There are some things I would like to do but I think I am going to be a little less ambitious this year.

So for the new year Blood Bowl is something I would like to work on. I have planned to get some Forgeworld pieces for the Skaven team but haven’t had the money. So I would like to get this done in 2019. I would like to get another team, probably he Dwarves, done as well and maybe buy some more figures and paint another team as well. I have the Doom Lords in boxes and it would be nice to get them done as well. As I put a lot of effort into these figures they tend to take up a lot of time so this might be more ambitious (already being ambitious within a paragraph of me saying that I wasn’t going to do that) than I can manage. Some more Nurgle and the Champions of Death would be nice. Two teams of about eighteen to twenty figures would be a reasonable objective.

Having played in a Star Wars RPG this year I have been taken with the idea of running that game although probably as a Savage Worlds game rather than one of the published rules. Solo was a great film no matter what the critics say and I have watched Rogue One several times. All this keeps giving me ideas. About half the figures that have come my way this year have been for the Star Wars Legion game. I thought about the Imperial Assault game but like the figures for Legion better even if they are massively too big. These are ripe for conversion. I suspect that I will be buying some more and maybe some conversion stuff. I would like to see sixty figure/two foam trays full of figures completed.

As I am going to be running the Viking Game and I am feeling the fantasy vibe, I suspect that I will be painting figures for this came at some point during the year. If I throw in some more mainstream fantasy stuff in this section I can see me doing quite a lot of work. I have a load of small lizardmen primed and based and ready to go, just like last year oddly. The same can be said for some GW LOTR rangers which is fancy more as thieves or bandits. There are gnolls and cultists too. Celtic dwarves and some gnomes (not for the Viking game) from CP Models are still on the wish list. The latter will probably get ordered in bulk and converted for Titansgrave. There are some halfling figures due out that might catch my attention (some of which may end up being converted for Titansgrave). I would be surprised if I painted less than fifty this year although a few more would be nice.

Zombies are bound to play a part if I get my painting mojo going. There is plenty of Mantic stuff still to do including the Made To Suffer expansion that I got for Christmas. A couple of boxes of prone figures might get purchased and Here’s Negan might come my way this year. Whilst I guess I have sixty plus figures to paint I would be happy if I managed a foam tray full/about thirty figures.

As far as background projects go there is stuff I would like to work on. The apocalypse is never far from my mind. It would be nice to do some work on this he post-apocalypse in the London Underground seems like it might see some work and some of these may morph into Fallout. I have been playing Red Dead Redemption II a bit and I might think about doing some more cowboys but this seems less likely (it should have been Fallout 76 but I really don't want to talk about that right now). Having seen a few things about strange happening in Arizona (an area that I am drawn to for gaming for some reason) I might try and do some Conspiracy X like.

The New Cruelty has called for about five figures per week. Obviously this hasn’t happened this year and I don’t think it is going to happen this year. I am not expecting to start painting in the next month or so. When I do I am not expecting to have as much time on my hands. Setting a target of an average of ten figures a month rather than five per week seems more appropriate. The New Cruelty will be a little less cruel this year.

The future of the blog, well it is still pretty secure. I would like to think I am going to do better than I expect at the moment. I would like to get back into it a bit more so would hope to do at least two posts per week. If I can manage a little more I may even get to a thousand posts. This means that I need to do something to blog about. This year is another birthday milestone for me. This seems to be a year for a change.

So here we are. It’s a watch and wait kind of year in the offing.

Thanks for reading the blog this year. I really do do it for me but it is nice to know that somebody else is out there and reading what I have to write. A happy new year to you all. Hope it’s a good one and brings you everything you want.

End Or Start Of The Week

This has not been my most productive week of miniature painting. It's still Easter weekend so I am calling this the end and start of the week and my habit is to review the week.

I only managed to get four figures finished from last week's roster. This fell short of my usual target of five figures. Given that I am repainting an titivating some figures I had much higher expectations. That said it has been an exceptionally crap week. Stuff has been going on this week and it's not been good. It's also a bad anniversary for me which has caused me to have an almost total lack of focus. Still there is a chance that I can catch up this week as a lot of the other figures I started are pretty close to being finished. The New Cruelty is not happy.

Assuming that I am going to get somewhere with these figures, there is another bunch of figures to do. Whilst I was having a sort out the other week I came across a bunch of mutants which I think are Mongoose Miniatures Judge Dread Muties. These were done well over a decade ago and are pretty bad, hence the picture being at a bit of a distance. These should improve quite nicely.

On the health front I have managed a 5k run this week. Not my fastest performance ever but I managed it. The second one I have managed since taking my health a bit more seriously. After all that I can safely say that I am the lightest I have been this decade. So on balance I have managed to get through the week.

The Opposing Forces

Conflict is the driving force behind most games. This is why games are called Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, Villains & Vigilantes and Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes and not Accountants & Academics. Right now the only real conflict I am interested in is Man vs Flu.

The RPG I was going to start running again (using Savage Worlds) involves fighting the army of a Necromancer (assuming they don't go off at a tangent). This means that I need a bad guy and his allies as well as a force for the good guys. There are no end of fighting types in the boxes upon boxes of figures I posses.

Big Nobs At The From The Battle Of Hastings

I might be a bit light on cavalry but I doubt this will be a problem as armies tended to be cavalry light if they had any at all. The bad guys, being an undead army, will be mostly skeletons and zombies with a few extras. I might need a few more but I think I have enough. There are a few skeletal cavalry still it bit form in a draw on my desk. I might get round to making them up. I need a few character type figures for the bad guys. The good guys should be easier. I'll still need a few banner men. The heroes will be whatever the characters pick. In the round, these should be easier to get ready. Either way, there should be enough figures to get some testing done later in the week.

eBay has been good to me again, if you can call it that. I have managed to get The Road To Woodbury expansion for The Walking Dead: All Out War for a good price. This will give me a chance to practice the rules and more importantly a chance to have some more figures to paint for Zomtober. Zombie games have been a big thing for me for years. I haven't run a game in ages and I am feeling the urge to run one at the moment.

Bases, Washes And A Need to Clean Up The Workbench

This is going to be a quick post. I am coming down with a bug the kids have given me. Yey.

The FabLab went okay. I was bounced out a little early so I didn't get all that I was hoping to do. Hopefully the staff will finish off my stuff for me and I will be able to pick it up on Thursday. I still managed to get fifteen plus bases cut and all have been glued, most have been flocked and some have been painted. I should have just about enough to run a game when these are done and there will be enough for multiple options when the rest get finished.

After doing that I finished off a few more details on the figures.The Gripping Beast Romano-British are coming along nicely but I am struggling to bring out some of the details of the Northstar Frostgrave figure. Then I moved onto doing the washes. There are still a few details that need to be attended to as well as the highlighting. Hopefully I should get this done for close of play tomorrow.

Zomtober is on the Horizon. Although I have missed out for a couple of years, I have a plan that means that I should be taking part, I got a few minis today just for the purpose of running the game. These are perhaps the most expensive minis (in 28mm anyway) I have purchased in a while.I have primed them today but they should be being started in earnest in the next week or so.

FabLab, Wargames And Bases

Much to my surprise I got to FabLab just about on time. This proved to be a bad thing. Having booked the machine, someone else was using it when I got there and I was told that the time I had wasn't going to happen because they were going to close early. With a bit of targeted complaining I got them to extend the hours but still didn't get what I want done because it took over forty minutes to get the other guy of the machine.

For a while now I have been working on the idea and basics for a Savage Worlds driven wargame. There are a couple of wargame systems available already. The mass battle system in the rules is extremely basic and the Showdown rules won't handle mass battles. So I thought I could find a third way.

The plan calls for about ten to twelve units per side with units ranging from about five to thirty men. In a world where two hundred men might be called an army, this is about right. What I have wanted to do is give the rules a serious play test. I have played them through with digital paper counters and they seemed to work okay. Over the summer I have been thinking about doing it as a miniatures games, I just needed some sabot bases.

As a game it is really an extension of a RPG campaign but like most of my games, I like a mass battle element to them. So I want  a mass battle feel but still have the scope for using individual heroic characters. There are plenty of dark age figures in my collection but they are all based individually as I am primarily a roleplay at the moment. So whatever the rules were going to be would have to take this into account. I also wanted a system that would allow characters to be right up in the action but a bit more, well, wargaming light. The most obvious solution was sabot basing.

Take somewhere between two and six infantry or two or three cavalry figures per base. Make sure that there is some scope for bigger monsters and even light artillery (okay I have two dwarf ballistas and I might get one for a Romano-British early saxon army).

I had hoped to walk away with about enough bases for two armies. Time got a bit short but I have still walked away with enough stuff for eighteen bases, admittedly some are not needed at the moment and I could do with a few more leg infantry bases. However, I should have enough of the stuff cut by the close of play on Saturday to make that happen.

A bit of sand, some time, some paint, some wash (maybe make some of my own wash as I am now going to need a lot of it) and a bit of highlighting and that should do me.Time is getting a bit tight to have all this done and finish my figures but I live in hope.

Back To FabLab

With the kids being back in school FabLab is back on. I went down there yesterday with little expectations of even getting access to the machine let alone the thing working properly. So I was surprised when there was no one there wanting to use it and the machine working properly. Apparently I had done a better job at diagnosing the problems with the machine that the staff had.

The trouble was that I didn't have much of an idea what to do. Over the last week or so I had an idea for a stick to paint figures on. Something I could slot in bases so that I could secure the figures with whilst priming and varnishing. As I have done a lot of that lately, I thought it might come in useful. Seems like it worked out well, hopefully not too well. This is a product I think I am going to produce.

This wasn't going to take too long so I thought i would cut up some bases. For years I have been using two 2p coins glued together as cavalry bases. This works well but us time consuming and messy. So I cut a few appropriately sized bases. I don't do too much cavalry (I have a thing about hating painting horses) but there are plenty of monster minis (I am thinking about the dozen or so dire wolves I did a few years ago). Then onto a few larger monster sized bases. My stocks of 30mm, 40mm and 50mm were running low so I thought I'd top these up.

There was a little bit of space left on the board so I thought I'd do some template sized circles for Savage Worlds. Sadly the Medium Burst Template didn't come out how I would of liked it.

For a while I have been working on a Savage Worlds wargame. I think I might give the sabot bases for that atrial during the week.

End Of The Week And Stuff

This week has been more about getting stuff done than painting. My neck is killing me so painting has not been much fun and it has been a bit easier to do the other things. So all basing, gluing, varnishing and priming. There has even been the putting stuff away in boxes that will only get opened once or twice a year. In my head I am using what could laughable be call the British summer to use sprays outside. Even then the house still smells of propellant. Over the weekend I had hoped to go to a show and maybe pick up some foam trays to store figures but this wasn't going to happen.

Now I have a few days of grace. There is a bit more finishing off to do. To be honest, there are now some many projects on the go it might take me till the end of the year to finish them. My fucos (that was a joke) is far from clear. I am on holiday in a week so I have a little time to catch up but I am happy doing the scut work which is usually my biggest downfall so I am making the most of it.

With the next week looking like I might catch up on what The New Cruelty dicates, what I have started already and maybe a few new figure should see me get to my target. Then I'm on holiday so I doubt anything will get done.

Anyway, here are some of the figures I have put into long term storage today. Ex Harlequin now Black Tree Designs I think. No they are not Skaven they, are Ver men.

Really not sure why I got round to painting these figures now. Some have been sat around half painted for over a decade. I ordered some more when I got some High (I mean Dark) Elves last year. They so don't fit into any game I am planning at the moment. Although, that said, I could see a conversion job to sci-fi post apocalypse quite easily.

Gratuitous Work In Progress Shots

What chances I have had today I have spent painting. This should have been a good day for painting as my other half is out of the house for a few days. Trouble is the dog is missing her and has spent a lot of time going mental.

My first six Blood Bowl Human linemen are up. Progress on these has been quick but I have chosen a fairly simple colour scheme (Widnes Vikings' away strip). Compared to the Orc Team, these should be a doddle. Anyway, I have no pictures yet so I will do a bit more work and get some shots up.

The Troll

There is also the Orc Team Troll. This has taken a bit of a back seat for some reason. For a long time I have found large minis a little off putting as projects go (and horses to but I have got better at painting them). Whilst I haven't done much, I have taken the opportunity of having spare paint on my palette to add some details. This makes it officially a background project. The figure is hugely animated and will look really good when finished. My only gripe is that there is a lot of areas on the model that are hard to get to. When he is done he should make a nice addition to the team.

Speaking of background projects, I have three fantasy figures on the go. These are all Frostgrave creatures, a beastcrafter, a golem and an apprentice. These have been on the bench for the best part of a year so I figured that it was time that I at least made an effort with them.

Frostgrave "finest"

I guess the reason why they are taking so long to get done is that they don't current fill any needs, they are just things I like the idea of painting them. So the repeatedly fall to the back of the queue.

Game Of Thrones And Bigger Picture Fantasy RPG

I was catching up with GOT today. It is only really this show and The Walking Dead that I really look forward to at the moment. So finding a moment when I can watch it without interruptions is a good thing.

Watching shows like this (and Vikings, The Last Kingdom and similar shows like Rome have similar vibes) always make me think what they would be like as an RPG. I have seen plenty of figure conversions on sites like Lead Adventure Forums for GOT minis. Possibly there is also a viable kickstarter out there with some more specific figures for a tabletop wargame. There has been a tabletop  RPG out there for a while as well. Basically there is no shortage of inspiration.

To be honest I doubt I would run it as a tabletop game. There is far too much to remember and players being people are bound to trip me up. However it did start me down the road of RPGs and the statecraft element. These, and other systems, had a big effect on the idea of spectacle that plays a central role in my games.

The biggests game I have set in motion, in recent years at least, such as Fallout and Vikings, both featured mass battle system. For the Viking game I have even done a Savage Worlds mass combat system. Yes I know they have a skirmish game called showdown but it doesn't give the almost wargame feel that I wanted which still allows the players and heroic NPCs to have an effect on the outcome.

Whilst I know these are combat systems, the real pleasure in such a system is how it creates a story and builds a background. If you look back in dark age history the most notable events are the battles. This is despite the being fairly limited records of what went on. Now I am not talking in terms of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles but having a history of the game alongside a mythology always helps the players to buy into a game.

Most players like a scrap. There are not many RPG games out there that are combat light. Skirmish battles are fine but if the players want to make it into a games legends, they have to claim their glory in the biggest battles.
 

Conan, Conan, Conan

I listened to a Conan audio booklast night, I am currently watch Conan the Barbarian on the TV, I have been playing a Conan computer game for some of the day and I have started looking seriously at doing Conan as a tabletop RPG. Somehow I just can't seem to stay on mission.

So like the other games I have run in the last few years it is starting with a document. Having taken on the ideas of Savage Worlds, I cobble the best bits from other games, get rid of the bits that don't do it for me and turn it into a game.

So far I have about six pages of background that I am happy with. When I look at the Viking game, which I am still far from happy with, it has got to well over a hundred pages of A4. This tells me that the process is at a very early stage.

The Random GM

Whilst I am currently favouring the phrase Maitre d'ungeon after inadvisably watching Robin Hood, men in tights (for the second time this year) I am at heart a Games Master. I have already mentioned that I am playing Conan: Exiles on the PC at the moment. Not that long ago I was talking about turning this into a tabletop RPG. The computer game is currently locked in a desert environment which has a decidedly Scorpion King vibe.

Aside from needing to buy (and paint up) a load of figures, the biggest problem has been coming up with a scenario. Over the years I have been more about substance than style. Players then tend to complain that they are getting railroaded as you try to keep them on the track of my well crafted piece of theatre.

You cannot get more random that just rolling a dice (well technically you can but...). Have an idea and see what happens. This was the heart of Patron Encounters in Traveller. There was a website a good long time ago called Tales of Terror which was the same sort of the for Call Of Cthulhu. This has a simple, usually one paragraph, scenario with a number of options. This was usually accomplish with a dice roll but it was always possible to use several of the options to give a layered scenario with a few false ends.

Ages ago I had a copy of an old DMG. This had a fair section at the back dedicated to random dungeon generation. This had a lot of appeal to me at the time. To be fair it is great to take the mental strain out of generating dungeons. Wandering monster tables were a staple of Tunnels + Trolls as well as D+D. The downside is that they take a bit away from the flow of the game as you sit there with a chart and some dice.

Once I had been told about this (a few times at least) I decided to do something about it. At the time I was playing Conspiracy X. Here I used tarot cards to allow the players to divine the future. I had a pen outline for each card using traditional interpretations of the cards. To keep it to the theme of the game I attached characters and events to certain cards.

To be honest I had a number of possible scenarios outlined and I took a look at the cards and tried to work in the ideas on the table  in with the overall campaign. I was surprised how well it worked. To back me up I made sure that the readings were all photographed so I had evidence that it was all in the hand of cards. Having different characters attached to different cards and a dash of "genuine" tarot babble it gave some credence to a game that was pretty heavily locked into the supernatural.

More recently I have been using Rory's Story Cubes. There are three main sets and a number of smaller tag on sets. Generally I pick one of the larger sets, typical this is the original set, and then one or more of the smaller sets. The smaller sets are more specific so I pick the sets that are most relevant to the setting and my plans for the scenario.

Normally I stick with about eight or nine dice out of the one available. If things don't seem to make too much sense I will swap the facings of a few of the dice over. Someone accused me of cheating by doing this but I think they had a borderline psychiatric condition.  This isn't cheating, you are creating a story. It can be helpful to put them in order. Then I would get out a pen and a piece of paper and make some very rough notes. If I need a trap or a monster I will wait until the players are talking amongst themselves and quietly pick something out.

Savage Worlds has a tag on system called the Adventure Deck. Most GMs don't seem to use this. Many of the cards give bonuses in combat. Generally I think that combat is easy enough so I ditch these before doing anything else. I favour the ones that add to the roleplaying side of things. Although there is a standard deck, there are plenty of fan created cards out there and there is also a way to create you own cards. This hands some of the random over to the players. It helps them to buy into the game and giving the cards that help further the plot is always good. They can be crated for specific games for even more flavour and I have done this for the Viking Game and Fallout.

Madpies

Just an idea I have been working on today.

MADPIES

Magpies were everywhere before the ruin. The familiar little black and white member of the crow family was very adaptable. It’s level of intelligence was extremely high and was considered one of the most intelligent non-humanoid animals.

It’s ability to feed on just about anything, including young birds and eggs, small mammals, insects, scraps and carrion, acorns, grain, and other vegetable substances allowed in to adapt well to the new environment. Maybe it was their high level of intelligence that allowed them to survive but it is possible that it had other effects as well.

Magpies went mad. They constantly watch for trouble, carry out repetitive pointless tasks, they twitch uncontrollably, have facial ticks, attack other animals for no readily definable reason, are known to bang their heads against solid objects and even their call sounds like it’s crazy.

They represent no real threat to people although they are known to drop small stones on them and dive at people whilst defecating. Apart from this people that see them are fascinated by them. Many have a real sense that madpies. Some religious groups use the madpie as a symbol of man’s sins and that they are actually taken away man’s sins from them.

Madpies have thrived and have got a few inches bigger over time. Usually they are found in small groups of around half a dozen. They are just as common now as they were before the apocalypse and can be found almost anywhere on the surface of the city.

Attributes: Agility d4; Smarts d4 (a); Spirit d4; Strength d4-3; Vigour d4-1

Pace: 8; Parry: 2; Toughness: 2; Feathers: 1, Flesh: 1; Fat: 1; Leather: 0

Special Abilities:

• Flight: Madpies have a Flying Pace of 10”, with an Acceleration of 2”.

• Food Animal: Although they can be hunted for food, killing and especially eating madpies is considered unlucky by most and a cardinal sin by a few.

• Size –2: Madpies are tiny.

Mecha

My auntie got me some sort of Japanese mecha toy when I had just started High School. Apparently it was all the rage somewhere but it looked a bt poop to me. I remember reading a review of  a new game called Battletech in what was probably 1984 in Imagine Magazine. It seemed like a really nice idea. Of course I was never going to buy it and still haven't. I did make my own game out of cereal packets back then as I did with a lot of games.

Part of me still likes the idea. It's something I have been playing around with for Savage Worlds for ages. Now I am about ready to play test it and use it as a possible RPG campaign. So I have been working on it a bot between all the other stuff that has gone on today. The background is still a bit light so maybe I should start doing some work on that.

Underground

The end of the world seems to be Underground at the moment. Well in the Underground if I am being literal. I am just about to finish the content of the first thing I think I could actually publish. There is plenty books right behind it as, whilst I work on one book, the ideas for another come in tandem. So the bestiary is just about done. There is an equipment and crafting guide not far behind it and a number of smaller works on robots, humans, diseases, vehicles, flora, robots and the truly odd and bizarre. There are a few more ideas but these are not as well formed.

I may have a couple of mates around tomorrow and I can see the weekend being busy. This should be good for the blog as I might have something more interesting to look at.

Blabbering

Not much done today. Well nothing that is tangible. After working on the SUnderdground background again, I thought it was time I did a bit more on the laser cutting front. I have worked out some more ideas. Having kind of gone overboard with the Fallout crafting thing, my mind keeps running back to the way they construct terrain. I have already worked out how to do some rickety looking post-apocalyptic fencing, I thought I would try a raised wooden platform. It took a little while to work out the geometry but that is done now.

This is a picture of one of the monsters that will populate my ruined version of London, Hogzilla. Although there are plenty of wild pigs running around London, hogzilla is something different. A true beast, more the size of a car than a pig.

End Of The Week And Tokaido

It was about ten years ago whilst reading a book about Japan that I first heard about people walking along the Tokaido. I am not sure if the word pilgrimage is the right one but it has a status in Japan a little like a spiritual version of the Pennine Way or the Inca Trail. These have become three walks that I want to do. When I heard that there was a board game about it, it was a certainty that I was going to buy it. Then I couldn't find the damn thing in the shops or online (well not at a price i was going to pay).

Then the day after my mum's funeral I was in Liverpool and there it was. the deluxe version with plastic figures. So I got it and kind of hid the receipt for a bit. It is a thing of beauty. having always like Japanese woodcut prints, the artwork was just perfect. The figures have the same artistic licence of the artwork and will sooner or later join the paint queue. hell, it even came with metal coins and the build quality is just fantastic.

Having watched it played online a few times (I am sad enough to watch people play board games online but only because there is very little I can watch because of the kids) so had a handle on the rules. It is easily what I call a round-robin-shaftathon. It is all about getting points but it is better to get points in a way that most infuriates the other players. This is therefore a game most of my mates should like.

So I got a chance to play it today. As a two player game I was a little disappointed. There is a mechanic to add a non player character to the game but it does not facilitate the shaftathon element as much as I would like. Next weekend there is going to be at least one more player so hopefully should be a better game.

Anyway, the end of the week is here. I got to the FabLab yesterday and have nearly sorted out all my problems with the laser cutter so should hopefully get my money back and get another one soon. I have had another play about with the bits I got cut yesterday and developed a few more ideas in CoralDRAW today to follow on from what I learnt yesterday.

Whilst it seems that I done nothing but laser cutter stuff this week, that would be a lie. I spent a bit of time playing Witcher III which is a game I play for a bit and then leave but I always want to return back to it. Having thought about it I am not sure what the allure is but it is similar to other games that I like, these all seem to revolve around collecting bits to craft other things. As a lot of it involves plants I have been using the phrase Combat Floristry a lot. Even though I have been playing awhile, I seem to be levelling up quite slowly and this means I am not really capable of taking on the bigger, badder monsters and that I die a lot.

I did do some work on my Underground post apocalyptic background for Savage Worlds this week. As time goes by, I get a torrent of ideas and start to work on them. What I should really be doing is finishing one idea off and starting on the next thing. There is the scope for about half a dozen to maybe as many as a dozen PDFs which I am going to see if I can get published online. When they are done.

Anyway, the week ahead is looking good. I have a mate due at mine for a long weekend so I should get some gaming done. My local show is on over the weekend so I will be out spending money there, but not too much. I should get to the FabLab on Thursday and hopefully try out my latest ideas.

End Of The Week - Miniature Painting Update

It's actually been a better week for painting than I was expecting. It started with having to finish off five Ratling/Halfling snipers. My urge is to say that they are finished but I am guessing this is not really the case. There is stuff that I can do on them but the truth is that I am never really going to be happy with them. For the time being I am going to keep them on the table and play about with them until I am happy with the final result.

This should really screw up my timetable. Last week I was supposed to finish them and move on and I set myself a goal of finishing them and do another five figures. At the beginning of the week I thought that there was going to be no chance of that happening. Then I started the dryads. I have a dozen of these and I was expecting to finish six of them so that I could be caught up with my goals. Instead I managed to get all twelve of them done, based, varnished and even managed to get some extra bits on the bases.

The week's work didn't end there. I have based and primed a load of figures including seven gnolls and another figure that I thought was a gnoll for a while. It turns out it's actually a beast crafter and to be honest, although I like the figure, it's probably of no use to me at all. There are a few other figures primed and based. There are a couple of earth golems and a genie ready to go too. These should be easy to get done.

I was a little unhappy with the way the bases on The Walking Dead Miniatures bases had turned out. As well as varnishing them, I put a few tufts on the bases to hide the worst of it. I'll put these back in the box now, it seems like a good place to put them. I was looking at the new releases for the game. There are another twenty four figures due out. Whilst very nice they work out at around £4 per figure. Now I know you get some other bits with them but they are not much use to me. Whilst I like them I am not sure I like them that much.

Conan...Ish

I can't say it has been a great day for gaming. It was my intention to set up a game of The Walking Dead: All Out War. Last night was not a good night for sleeping for me and I ended up on the sofa in front of the TV a little before six a.m. after going to bed at around two a.m. So my day has been a bit blurred with tiredness. Not a day for boardgames.

Not wanting to do much of anything I settled for playing a game on the computer. So I have played Conan: Exiles most of the day. It's a crafting and survival game and I quite like the genre. It's been a while since I read the stories (I'm thinking thirty years) but I do have a soft spot for them. It was after watching the Conan The Barbarian films and someone telling me the books were much better. They were right.

Anyway, the game is an early access and whilst it has a number of interesting features it is a little bit buggy and still has some work to do on the development side. I have found it a frustrating day. It does have a lot of nice ideas and it could become an excellent game. Hopefully it will  not be like 7 Days to Die which, whilst it regularly gets better has been regularly getting better for years.

What it has left me with is a passing idea to do a Conan or probably more likely a Conan like game. I know that there is a d20 version by mongoose but d20 is not my thing. I am guessing that there is a Conan module for Savage Worlds and as that is my go to RPG I wouldn't have to worry about rules just the figures.

I am sure that I can find figures for the game. Some suitable ancients figures are out there and I was thinking that some arabic style dark age figures that would do for one of the races. There are a lot of animals in the computer game and a few in what I remember from the books. There are also a number of monsters that would be usable. I dare say that I could get by with less than a hundred figures. I know someone who has some ancient Egyptians that would do as a starting point.

I am sure this is just a passing fancy. I am watching the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and I am thinking about the ancient Chinese/Japanese/Monkey/Journey to the West that I have always said I would run.

Still tomorrow is the start of a new week and there are figures to paint. I have a feeling it will involve zombies Frostgrave and Titansgrave. I am confident that I will make my figure painting target bit next week is going to be a tough week for me so I am not going to try to over face myself. Still Monday is a bank holiday and maybe I will have enough time before things start to prepping for the funeral.

First Batch Off The Walking Dead Zombies - All Out War Are Done

I have my six The Walking Dead All Out War zombies done so just a quick post today. I have worked on them a bit and I have made fairly rapid progress here and here. The New Cruelty dictates that I have to finish five figures a week. This is six miniatures down and with a bit of luck I will finish another six tonight. I will probably touch up the black of the bases and add some clump foliage when they have been spray varnished.

All Out War part 1: The boys

They look okay. Just to look at the original resin I would have said the detail was just a little bit soft but the end result says otherwise.

All Out  War part  2:  The girls

The obvious next project is the characters which is the next probably target. I got some Blood Bowl stuff this week. As well as finishing off the zombies I have been putting together the orc team troll but more about that in another post.

Reading And Painting - Scrappers And The Walking Dead

At about six this morning I woke up and started reading the Scrappers Rulebook. I haven't read that much of it and I am reserving comment until I have read it through. Many of the Osprey rule books, with the exception of the Ambush Alley stuff has been okay (both Force On Force and Tomorrow's War being excellent pieces of work) could use a bit of polish. Frostgrave is okay and I have almost everything they have done but I still haven't played a game and I am not sure I will. The more traditional format for Osprey books (the ones with the dark blue covers in the standard Osprey size) have some nice ideas but I can always find big niggles with them. When I have read the Scrappers book, maybe played a game of it and had a chance to consider it, I will do a proper review.

I have continued with The Walking Dead miniatures. I have done a lot of work on the first batch of six and a little bit on the second batch. The New Cruelty demands five figures a week. If I can proceed at the pace I have managed today over the weekend I might get the full dozen zombies done. Maybe they might need some varnishing and some work done on the bases but the paint should be done. As simple models lacking a lot of equipment the number of colours required is limited. You can bet that the character figures will take much longer. As far as these figures go, I expect they are more likely to end up in a Savage Worlds RPG than their intended purpose first.

I can't find any round bases. I have a box of the things in my garage somewhere but I still can't find them. I would like to be doing the orks/orcs but without the bases this is not possible. Now that I have a troll for my orc bloodbowl team, I can see that my interest is peaked with that as well. I am guessing that I am going to side with anything I think I can get a game with.

I have tried to write this post a few times today. For some reason it is proving really difficult. There is obviously a lot going on in my head at the moment. Having had a terrible nights sleep and a busy day there has been no time to catch up with myself. Hopefully, tomorrow will prove to be a better day. There are a lot of calls to make so maybe not.